the relevance of forensic science in pleistocene investigations

CLOTTES J. (dir.) 2012. — L’art pléistocène dans le monde / Pleistocene art of the world / Arte pleistoceno en el mundo Actes du Congrès IFRAO, Tarascon-sur-Ariège, septembre 2010 – Symposium « Application des techniques forensiques

aux recherches sur l’art pléistocène »

The Relevance of forensic science in Pleistocene investigations

Yann Pierre MONTELLE and Robert G. BEDNARIK

Abstract Most rock art studies over the past two centuries were primarily concerned with interpretations of meaning rather than with testable propositions. The discipline possibly most closely related to a scientific study of rock art is forensic science. Based on the principle postulating that with contact between two proximal entities there will be an exchange, and based on the proposition that some physical evidence of these exchanges does survive taphonomic decay, forensic science should provide a critical contribution to current and future investigations of rock art sites. The application of forensic techniques in palaeoart investigations is concerned with establishing what events and processes occurred at a rock art site or in the production of portable palaeoart, in what sequence, and what can be credibly inferred from such often-minute evidence. Specific examples are related from the authors’ experience, showing how closely rock art science resembles the methodology of forensic science.

“[…] the criminologist re-creates the criminal from traces the latter leaves behind, just as the archaeologist reconstructs prehistoric beings from his finds.” Edmund Locard 1945 – (quoted in Houck 2001)

Allusions to a close nexus between forensic science and palaeoart investigations

have appeared occasionally in the literature. What is proposed here is to discuss the feasibility of a forensic-inspired methodology as one of the cornerstones for investigations about human behaviour in pre-History. At this juncture, it is important to reiterate the fact that these investigations operate in complete absence of informants and therefore motivations and purposes. The rock art site becomes a “crime scene”. Even in the absence of the “perpetrator(s)”, we are still able to reconstruct their behaviour based on the fact that… “Wherever he steps, whatever he touches, whatever he leaves, even unconsciously, will serve as a silent witness. Not only his fingerprints or his footprints, but his hair, the fibers from his clothes, the tool marks he leaves, the paint he scratches […] All of these and more, bear mute witness. This is evidence that does not forget. It is not confused by the excitement of the moment. It is not absent because human witnesses are. It is factual evidence. Physical evidence cannot be wrong, it cannot perjure itself, it cannot be wholly absent. Only human failure to find it, study and understand it, can diminish its value.“ – Harris v United States 1947)

Symposium Application techniques forensiques…

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A new discipline? The forensic-inspired approach1 that we are discussing should not be understood

as a new discipline, but rather approached as a forum2 where past efforts, recent developments, and future innovations could be effectively synthesized. The aim is to create a coherent and rigorous axis around which contributing disciplines3 articulate and communicate by using standardized methodologies to collect, analyze, describe evidence, and assess propositions. The dawn of this approach can be traced back to the year 1957 with the publication of Prehistoric technology written by S.A. Semenov. This book is “the result of twenty years of microscopic research on prehistoric stone and bone tools, which has shed a flood of light on both their methods of manufacture and use.” (Semenov 1964: ix). Further in the translator’s preface we find the following: “[…] the book draws together a great mass of scattered information on experimental work in making and testing tools […]” (ibid.). Thus the idea of replicative analysis was launched and, combined with microscopy and traceology, brought the investigation about our past one step closer to forensics. Semenov’s groundbreaking methodologies inspired many, amongst them A. Marshack and F. D’Errico. Marshack’s internal analysis has ushered us into the forensic concept of trace analysis and tool marks (1985). D’Errico, on the other hand, has given microscopy its lettres de noblesse by demonstrating that tool marks and other traces on portable artefacts could be empirically identified and hence matched to collected evidence (D’Errico 1991). Both researchers focused on portable engravings, especially on the issue of identifying notations on plaques, but their agreement that these could be recognised has been refuted. While it is possible to determine that two or more marks were made by the same tool point, it is impossible to know whether two different tools were used in any two marks (Bednarik 1991, 1997); therefore notation cannot be demonstrated. Nevertheless, the matching of observed modifications to actual evidence is at the core of forensics. Inspired by these robust and rigorous methodologies, recent investigators have made commendable efforts to adopt some of these techniques and to adapt them to field conditions. An exhaustive list of innovators would certainly start with the remarkable work of the teams involved with the Chauvet Cave (Clottes 2001). Large sections of the cave have been sealed for future investigations that will certainly benefit from more advanced technologies4.

1 Forensics is a process that follows five basic methodological stages: detection; documentation; collection;

analysis; interpretation. Common to all these stages is the concept of evidence. To the question; “what constitutes evidence?” and limited by space, only a generic definition will be proposed here: evidence include all items observed and potentially collected from a scene (a site).

2 Incidentally, the term forensic derives from the Latin adjective forensis meaning “public” or “of the forum”. Etymologically, the modern connotation inherent to the term ‘forensic’ finds its roots in Ancient Rome as a criminal charge was made in the forum. The accused and the accuser would be given an opportunity to provide their versions of the facts, most often in a well-crafted rhetorical monologue. More often than not, it would be the most persuasive speaker that would determine the outcome of the case. In Roman dialect one would then speak of “a person with the best forensic skills.”

3 An exhaustive and detailed list of pioneering efforts would provide us with ample examples of how forensics has gradually infiltrated the field of prehistory. But forensics has also been inspired by archaeological methodologies especially from the recent field of archaeometry. A field dedicated to the application of recent technologies to conduct analysis of evidentiary material from archaeological sites. Forensics was certainly inspired by their use of complex mathematical algorithms for handling, analysing and modelling data; by their increasing reliance on remote sensing and geophysical surveying technologies; by how they conduct analysis of samples using portable non-destructive techniques; and by their increasing efforts to fully understand the site’s taphonomy in order to preserve the evidence, etc.

4 With the recent breakthrough in portable microscopy and spectroscopy, the prospect of analysing some of these segments nears.

MONTELLE Y.P. & BEDNARIK R.G., The Relevance of forensic science in Pleistocene investigations

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The result is large areas where evidentiary material is most likely unspoiled, uncontaminated – a perfect “crime scene”.

This is evidence that does not forget… In the early 1900s, Edmund Locard (1877-1966) became convinced that traces of

dust found on a person could provide evidence of where that person had been. When Locard formulated this hypothesis, he immediately realized that he had provided the intuitive guesswork of police investigations of the time with a fundamental principle, which is today known as Locard’s Exchange Principle (LEP). LEP basically states that whenever two objects come into contact with one another, a transfer of material will occur. The transfer may be tenuous, but it will occur — and if the taphonomic processes have not been too severe, chances are that these traces of contact could survive. These silent witnesses are rock art’s most reliable evidence. They are frozen snapshots. Their detection and conservation is paramount5.

Consequent to the exchange principle is the concept of trace evidence. “Trace evidence is a generic term for small, often microscopic fragments of various types of material that transfer between people, places, and objects, and persist there for a time.” (Houck 2001: xi) Trace evidence is critically important for determining the nature of the transfer. In forensics, trace evidence is any type of material left at the scene. In the context of rock art evidence, trace evidence results from the contact between the site’s surface and material transported, applied, buried or forgotten. The generic typology of trace evidence includes, among other substances, fingerprints, hair, fibers, glass, soil, organic residues, DNA etc. The degree of force involved in the process of producing trace evidence will result in the transfer of variable amounts of substance from the surface of the substrate to the surfaces of the tool and vice versa. Transferred trace evidence found on modified surfaces can help reconstruct the biomechanical nature of the contact, the provenance of the substance, an absolute or a relative date for the transference, and once thoroughly examined can potentially feed a deduced interpretation.

The taphonomy of trace evidence One of the authors’ work on taphonomy6 is, in many respects, similar to the recent

development in forensics of what is called forensic taphonomy. Taphonomy is derived from tafo (= burial) and nomos (= laws). Taphonomy is literally then the study of the laws of burial. In the context of forensics, taphonomy is the study of all the processes/agencies that affect the decomposition, dispersal, erosion, burial and re-exposure of organisms after, at and before death (Efremov 1940; Solomon 1990). The intrusive and destructive nature of the taphonomic processes will ultimately result in sampling bias or differential preservation of some species, individuals, or body parts over others. Forensic taphonomy is the product of two specialised approa-ches to taphonomic processes: biotaphonamy and geotaphonomy. Biotaphonomy investigates the decomposition processes of hard and soft tissues based on external factors such as climate (abiotic), animal (biotic) as well cultural and behavioural

5 Site restriction and preservation is most critical to trace evidence since each visit has the potential to

contaminate these fragile evidence of contact. The ideal situation would be to identify, analyse, index, and, if necessary collect the trace evidence following the discovery and prior to archaeological investigations.

6 “In rock art science, taphonomy is the study of the processes affecting rock art after it has been executed, determining its present appearance and statistical properties” (Bednarik 2001: 163).


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factors. Geotaphonomy examines the processes involved in the alterations of buried organisms by the environment (biological and geological). Forensic taphonomy is therefore concerned with all the biological and geochemical alterations that occur to a decomposing tissue.

The taphonomy of trace evidence, here defined as “evidence dynamics” (ED) is another fundamental aspect of forensics, which needs to become standard in rock art investigations. ED refers to any agency that has played a critical role in changing, relocating, obscuring, or obliterating physical evidence. ED comes into play during the interval that begins with the discovery of the trace evidence to its completed analysis, either in situ or in lab conditions. As Paul Kirk, a well-known criminologist, used to say when he first entered a crime scene: “What is effect and what is cause?” This, in the context of rock art investigations, can be answered by the use of forensic axioms such as Locard's Exchange Principle.

But the established fact that contacts leave traces is not enough on its own. Often missing from the analysis is a consideration of those influences that have changed the identified physical evidence prior to or as a result of its examination. Leaving aside the question of integrity and the potential modification of evidence during examination, it is important to briefly discuss the impact of ED on trace evidence and modified surfaces. The list of possible taphonomic modifications of an item of evidence is too voluminous to be detailed here, suffice to say that the investigator is required to understand the taphonomic history of a site or of an artifact and how these processes of decay might have influenced the shape and localization of the evidence as observed at the time of discovery (Bednarik 1994).

The spectrum of modifications as by-products of ED is broad and complex. Physical evidence can be modified at the micro- or macro-level. Indexing these modifications is a prerequisite. Prior to the collection of samples and artefactual evidence, the site and the artifact need to be analyzed thoroughly so that any observed modifications can be documented in order to be replicated. Replication is the methodological culmination of the forensic process. In palaeoinvestigations, the replications of modifications should be systematic. In laboratory conditions, the investigator should be able to recontextualise the evidence in the environment where it was first observed and optionally collected. Through controlled experiments, the investigator is required to replicate aspects of the taphonomic history and the environment as well as the biomechanical process responsible for the deposition of traces and the modification of the observed physical evidence. Only then is the collected data useful for testing hypotheses and propositions.

If, as Locard’s brilliant principle suggests, every contact leaves a trace, then our primary task is to find the trace, analyze the trace, replicate the trace, and then potentially expand into a hermeneutic exercise about the trace. But, for integrity’s sake, it must be recognized that beyond the trace, and in the absence of informants, there are only informed conjectures7.

Finding evidence “[…] microscopic evidence is present in most cases, and is therefore of much

wider availability. If there is a single important lesson to be learned by the

7 Conjecture here defined as “a proposed reading of…” (OED)


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investigator, it is the extent to which he may rely on microscopic physical evidence if he is willing to make full use of it.” (Kirk 1953: 6, quoted in Houck 2001)

Detection of evidence using advanced technologies is at the core of forensics (Thornton 1997; James & Nordy 2005; Montelle 2009). Another fundamental aspect which investigators of pre-History will profit from is the notion that if the evidence is not seen this does not mean it is not there8. Failure to detect evidence can be due to a variety of factors. For example, if the evidence lies outside of the frame of routinely expected evidence it could be easily by-passed. Indexing evidence is the best response to this potentially paralyzing factor. In the process of indexing, the investigators must include all documented evidence as well as evidence that was never documented but falls within the logic of expected evidence. This type of evidence has to be manufactured in laboratory conditions and indexed in a format that can be used in the field. The expansion of evidence outside of the observed and documented is potentially one of the most important contributions forensics could make to investigations of human behaviour in pre-History.

To fully analyze the observed evidence, the investigator needs to proceed at both the micro- and macro-level. The analytical characterization of evidentiary materials and the understanding of the taphonomic degradation (ED), which the observed evidence has been subjected to, are two essential aspects of forensics that should become standard procedures in rock art investigations. Forensic investigators rely on a battery of technologies, ranging from the micro-observation provided by microscopy and spectroscopy to the macro-analysis in a laboratory of a laser-scanned fragile environment. The range of analytical procedures used by forensics and suited for investigations in pre-History is too wide to be fully described here. Descriptions of pertinent techniques will be limited here to a few examples.

Fig. 1. Using SEM for discrimination of quartz particles in haematite, Canterbury University, New Zealand.

8 Otherwise known as “evidence of absence is not absence of evidence”.


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Fig. 2. SEM images of heated goethite, Victoria University, New Zealand.

The use of microscopy (field microscopy, SEM, TEM, etc.) provides the investigator with an opportunity to investigate the evidence at a scale appropriate to critical features that can survive for millennia on some surfaces (Fig. 1-2). A recent example is a report written by a team of archaeologists who were looking for information regarding the climate in the Caucasus Mountains in the Upper Palaeolithic (Kvavadze et al. 2009). During a routine SEM examination of some organic material excavated from the floor of Dzudzuana Cave in the Republic of Georgia, the team unexpectedly found fibres of wild flax, dated c. 30,000 years old, with distinctive patterns of spinning, dying and knotting established as signatures of anthropic modifications. In this example, microscopy has provided unexpected evidence for a cultural habit, which seems to have been well established in the Aurignacian period.

In palaeoart forensics, a number of similar approaches have been applied to the task of “what happened at a site”. For instance, numerous paint samples from the cave of Niaux in France showed that the recipes were complex, and identifiable from their extender content (Clottes et al. 1990). In another case of analysing the paint residues of pictograms, pollen of some forty species were found and identified at Cangyuan sites in the Yunnan Province of China (Bednarik & Fushun 1991). Cole and Watchman (1992) detected microscopic plant fibres in twenty-six paint samples from Laura, north Queensland. They identified two of the species involved and compared their results with the local ethnography. Watchman has also contributed to the arsenal of rock art forensics by locating paint residues below subsurface accretionary mineral deposits, especially oxalates, and, using nano-stratigraphical excavation of such deposits (Bednarik 1979), he has demonstrated the repeated repainting of panels (Fig. 3).


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Fig. 3. Micro-section of rock surface accretions, 2.11 mm thick, with ten 14C dates spanning 26,000 radiocarbon years, Walkunder Arch Cave, north Queensland (photograph by Alan Watchman).

Such forensic methods, however, have been rarely applied so far in palaeoart research. The determination of paint composition has been considerably more popular (Koski et al. 1973; Clarke 1976; Ballet et al. 1979; Moffat et al. 1989; Clottes et al. 1990; Peisach et al. 1991; Clarke & North 1991; Watchman 1993; Scott & Hyder 1993; David et al. 1993; Morwood et al. 1994; Hyman et al. 1996; Mawk et al. 1996; Meneses L. 1996; Barker et al. 1997; Ward et al. 1999; Rowe 2001; Ward et al. 2001; Howell 2005; Valdez et al. 2008). Spectroscopy (PIXE, RTF, XRD, RAMAN, etc.) provides a method facilitating the characterisation of samples (Edwards 2004; Edwards & Chalmers 2005). Among the applications for spectroscopy, the sourcing of organic and mineral samples is feasible. Of particular interest is the increasing reliability of GC-MS (gas chromatography-mass spectrometry), which can identify different substances within a test sample (Pepe et al. 1991; Petit & Valot 1992; Scott et al. 1996). Applications of GC-MS can characterize trace elements thought to be disintegrated beyond recovery. With this technology, pigment recipes using additives such as saponin can be investigated, for instance.

The investigation of the chemistry of, or inclusions in, paint residues is only one of many forensics methods used in palaeoart analysis — or of potential value to this field. Anthropometric studies of rock art have been shown to offer valuable details about its production, but have remained relatively neglected. Obvious candidates are both handprints and hand stencils (Freers 2001; Gunn 2006, 2007), and in Australia other human body parts have also been the subject of stencilling (Fig. 4). It is self-evident that specific aspects of such motifs lend themselves to anthropometric study, but it must also be cautioned that care needs to be taken not to over-interpret the evidence. An example are the claims of determining the sex of hand stencil producers on the basis of the ratio between the 2nd and 4th digits of the human hand (e.g. Guthrie 2005; Chazine & Noury 2006). This is based on a weak sexually dimorphic pattern observed by Manning et al. (1998) in two English populations. However, finger length ratios can differ considerably among populations (Fig. 5), and Gunn (2006) has experimentally recorded great variations (see also Henneberg & Mathers 1994). Hand sizes may offer much more robust metrical data, and in the


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case of the known Palaeolithic sample from France and Spain, Guthrie (2005) has shown that these are essentially of children and adolescents.

Fig. 4. Stencil art in Carnarvon Gorge, central Queensland, Australia.

Fig. 5. Hand stencils: the measurement

of digit lengths presents difficulties.

Fig. 6. Finger flutings, Baume Latrone, France.

Another use of anthropometry also pointing to juvenile artists refers to the stamped dot patterns found on Magdalenian portable stone plaques (Bednarik 2002). The


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determination of finger sizes in finger flutings (Fig. 6), a common rock art form now known from France, Spain, Australia, Papua-New Guinea and the Dominican Republic, is yet one further useful application of anthropometric forensics to establish aspect of the events and processes that occurred at a rock art site (Bednarik 1986, 1987; Sharpe & Van Gelder 2006). The notion of a high participation of young people in the production of cave art (Bednarik 2008) derives considerable support from still another forensic source, the investigation of imprints of human body parts, most especially footprints on clay floors (Clottes 1985; Roveland 2000). These methods have all been under-utilised so far.

Fig. 7. Photography of invisible remains of a handprint under ultraviolet lighting, Gran Gran Cave, South Australia.

Various special photographic techniques may profit a forensic investigation of palaeoart, especially ultra-violet photography, which can render pigment traces detectable that are not visible to the unaided eye (Fig. 7). There is a host of other potentially valuable methods to be tailored to specific research issues. An example is provided by the following early project. At the site Stuarts Meadows in western New South Wale, Australia, a suspected percussion mur-e (hammer stone used in creating a petroglyph) was found in 1971, bearing on its point, at the end of an impact fracture, traces of a dark-brown material presumed to be ferruginous patination derived from the production of a petroglyph (Fig. 8). The forensic requirement was to test this hypothesis, which was done by chemically analyzing both this mineral matter and the nearby pavement accretion. The samples matched, containing the same five major components and the same eight trace elements. The matching signatures provided the required keystone evidence (Bednarik 2001: 40). This example illustrates how forensic work with palaeoart must be incorporated in refutable frameworks of knowledge acquisition.


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Fig. 8. Quartz hammerstone showing traces of patina at point, Sturts Meadows, western New South Wales, Australia.

This brings us to one of the perhaps most important forensic techniques so far applied in palaeoart research, the microscopic study of tool traces. Although long used for portable engravings, application of this method to petroglyphs began only recently (Bednarik 1984, 1986, 1987-88, 1992, 1997, 1998; Kitzler 2000; Alvarez 2001) and remains sporadic. Nevertheless, this field of traceology is particularly promising and the authors are currently engaged in finding ways to formalize what is a ferociously complex methodology (Fig. 9).

Fig. 9. Traceology conducted in Nung-kol Cave, South Australia, in 1985.

Kinetic mechanics in mark production is another candidate for forensic investigation, still practically unexplored, but again it must be cautioned that the


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issues are too complex for simplistic generalizations or indexation. To illustrate with an example, we could consider the preferred way a circle motif is created, vis-à-vis handedness (van Somers 1984), the developing ontogenic strategies in doing so (Ilg & Ames 1964; Haworth 1970; Thomassen & Teulings 1979), and how these are conditioned by training (Bender 1958; Goodnow et al. 1973). If cultural and physiological factors influence kinetic mechanics, they need to be accounted for in forensic work if errors of interpretation are to be avoided. Another example of errors in forensic methods applied to rock art is found in Loy et al. (1990) work concerning the detection of blood residues (mammalian IgG) in rock paintings at two sites (see Nelson 1993; Gillespie 1997 for refutation; and cf. Scott et al. 1996).

Fig. 10. Replicative experimentation in Ngrang Cave, South Australia, in 2008.

Finally, the importance of replicative experimentation to test forensic propositions needs to be emphasised (Fig. 10). Replication intended to evaluate the technology of rock art has sometimes been conducted by researchers on a limited scale (McCarthy 1962, 1967; Crawford 1964; Wright 1968; Sierts 1968; Pilles 1976; Savvateyev 1977; Loendorf 1984; Lorblanchet et al. 1990), with recent attempts to better formalize them as part of a forensic approach (Bednarik 1998, 2001, 2006; Weeks 2001).


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Quote this article MONTELLE Y.P. & BEDNARIK R.G. 2012. — The Relevance of forensic science in Pleistocene investigations. In: CLOTTES

J. (dir.), L’art pléistocène dans le monde / Pleistocene art of the world / Arte pleistoceno en el mundo, Actes du Congrès IFRAO, Tarascon-sur-Ariège, septembre 2010, Symposium « Application des techniques forensiques aux recherches sur l’art pléistocène ». N° spécial de Préhistoire, Art et Sociétés, Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Ariège-Pyrénées, LXV-LXVI, 2010-2011, CD: p. 1169-1182.

the relevance of forensic science in pleistocene investigations

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